A Woman Without a Floating Head

How do I reclaim my femininity?

A few months ago I came to realize, in the midst of a convo with a friend, that I have been a prisoner of my own making. He asked if I could just enjoy being me, to be me. And then I felt bulldozed by the frightening question of: who would I be without inspirational, tarot reader, preacher, spiritual advisor, multi-travelite Crystal Duan?

I have a reputation of being extremely personable, patient, charismatic, witty, and inspiring people to see things from different perspectives and value their pain. And I one-dimensionalize myself into a floating head, without a body. Sexless.

I wish I’d incarnated as a goddamn dancer. They communicate whole visions, whole worlds to you simply by being watched. Watching a dancer who FEELS his body, no matter how technically skilled he is, is like watching someone be at one with them. For I feel the most sensual, the most free, the most ripped open when I see that and feel I, too, can move my body and convey feelings to people they cannot process. My modality is words; but what if my modality was of the earth, not the ether? Of a journey of sex with the elements, without the destination?

I prefer words, and these days, I feel angry that words can only do so much as the bearer of them can write. The words are there because I value my pain. My Divine Masculine self said, “if you’re going to be bullied and misunderstood, we’ll learn to be useful and fight back and figure out a way to feel of value in this world.” They turned my Divine Feminine, scarred and aching and violated, into a source of pain. I was my best husband, the one best equipped to validate myself. And for a long time now, I’ve outsourced that feminine wheat into masculine bread manifesting my trauma into consumable wisdom, so it can fuel the spiritual economy. I’ve taken my extreme pain, gotten curious on it, and preached a gospel to all that meet me.

And now I’m a farmer going on a strike because I feel like I want to see who I’d be beneath the work I do, paid or not, for the collective. And I’ve been defined by my “work” for so long, whether it be journalism or spirituality, that now I am physically incapable of doing anything.

My jobs for the last few months have been contract work with various professional businesses of people that I trust. I work generous hours with generous pay and have a full time income on part time hours. This is ideal, and I am grateful for it. But in lieu of all that, my third eye is sealed shut with the next move. Wisps of ideas come in and out as to what the future holds. Most of the time, when I move to go and look, I feel disgusted enough by my body as if I ate something bad that i turn away.

I’m shocked to say that I don’t know how I’d be valued if I wasn’t charismatic, taking up space talking about deep things, intellectualizing my trauma into something palatable enough to induce a good mood for the sake of my companions. But clearly right now, I’m in the middle of a renaissance about it.

I look at these photos and I don’t see anything. If someone described me outside of what I do, what’d they say?. I’m numb to who I am to the world. I know how I view myself, but how do you view me? How do you view me when I don’t stimulate your brain? What am I worth,

The idea i cannot fathom how someone views me tortures me. They’d see I wear a red shirt, I have a smile on my face, I have long light hair, and..? Would they see how I sink to my knees everyday and sob, sobbing to the Higher Power that I may better see myself through the eyes of the world, the place I felt cut off from as a kid?

I cannot see myself as a woman. Which is not to say I don’t identify as a femme. But I cannot see myself in the mirror and think anyone else sees, “woman.” A prize, an emotional catalyst, a valuable person who only need bring her essence to be claimed as valuable.

I have never felt this. In a world in which conventional female archetypes are seen as Persephone and Aphrodite, I felt hated for being an Athena. I was loved as a spiritual companion, a funny person, but hated as a woman. For being smart, for being perceptive, made me unsafe seeming to men who ran. I began having sexual experiences with men I hated, men I thought had something I didn’t, as a way to make my trauma mean something positive for me. I enjoyed regaining power from feeling so worthless. Love and sex were so separate, because I felt so unworthy as a woman. 

But I’m a fucking woman. When I try to go back into thinking about being a woman, I think of how women in this world currently are defined by humiliation, by nagging, by weeping hopelessly, by being unable to grasp their vulnerability, feeling unsafe constantly.

Those ideas repulse me. My idea of being a woman is being the strongest warrior you know, the one who will push you into feelings of love you’d never have known possible, the only one who understands you and forgives you while keeping you accountable, the matriarch who gives stone cold orders while making you feel divinity in your bosom. Whose forgiveness could make you feel alive in a way you’d never known. Who doesn’t take your shit and will fight you with steely words, or is afraid of you breaking down in front of her. Who is soft when she wants to be desired, and strong when she affirms she desires you.

I’m reclaiming who I am as a woman, but there are no photos of me that make me feel that way. There are only a few moments in my life that made me feel that way. All this time, I’ve always felt like I had to be the strong one, the distant one, the in control one, after years of having emotional breakdowns that people shunned with no regret. My deep emotionality has now been co opted into intellectualism to the point where I actively hide feeling even when I am flirting. It’d take a brave man to spot the presence of even minor attraction; it’d take a braver man to recognize when I want him to claim me… how I start to fidget nervously, giggle nervously, even as my mouth is still a motor.

I reconciled recently that my top love languages were not in fact, Acts of Service or Gift Giving. They were and always have been Words of Affirmation. 

IF we center it around being a woman, only Words could ever really do that. Not Acts (makeover), Gifts (you’re the best girl! Here’s a necklace!), Physical touch (sex), or Quality Time (i’m spending time with you because you’re a girl)

Words create powerful lands, and if you can use words with me, it gains me trust. But words of affirmation needed to affirm the correct things, such as major truths that I have a hard time remembering. 

It’s not “Words of Flattery” or “Compliments.” Words affirm what reality is, and linguistic feedback is extremely powerful for this.

Words have the power to warp someone (including my own)’s perception of reality. What is not said and what is said are powerful factors.

So if you were to Love Me, what would that look up? It’d look like Affirming I Deserve To Be A Human. And I’d remember, through your energy, that you see me as a human. A human woman, that you felt an attraction to, and a human woman whose emotions were fascinating and made YOU want to be better, and whose emotions mirrored some of your own standards for the world and desires. The Words to Affirm would be…

“Me too. I feel that way too.”

“I’m on your team, because I feel deeply too, and I’m also sick of no one getting it.”

“You blow my mind, but more importantly, you touch my heart.”

“I want to make you less tired. I want to take care of you. I want you to not suffer.”

“I want you to feel free, because you make me feel free.”

“I want us to figure out how our realites intersect, so we don’t invalidate them together.”

“I could talk to you for hours about the hope we have in humanity even at our darkest hours.”

“I want to help you get outside your head into the wilderness.”

“I want to let you into my suffering, because I want you to know I want to handle it with you too.”

Sometimes I talk a lot because I like to entertain myself, keep life’s momentum going, keep myself on a high of awe and wonder and genuine connection.

Now I’m leaning into feeling like I want to conduct more hangouts in silence and see what someone gives back. If I didn’t initiate the feedback for someone to bounce off, would they create an interesting space for me that’s for us both? 

If I don’t talk about the intellectual things, do I cease to exist?

If you read to the end here, I’m going to tell you my future dream. I want to teach on what it means to be a woman and a man, to teach about polarity, to teach about sacred rage, to teach about who I want to be outside of someone who has a lot to offer. I want to teach this because i want to continue to do my part to make the world safe for me to live in. But the only way to manifest that is to already feel safe in the world I live in.

As of now, I don’t. So I don’t know when this dream for my career will come up. Everything I’ve ever known and loved has been ripped away, reborn, again and again. The only constant in my life has now been living in Los Angeles, where I also have the best friends I’ve ever known.

My imagination has been desolate, my womb is barren to explain to you the wisdom that used to seep out so effortlessly but now feels like blood spilling out of my wounds.

It’ll come back, once I the weary warrior can return to being the maiden I’ve always wanted.